


Pamper

by Duchesse



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Reader Insert, Romance, Smooching, drinking buddies, kiss, reader interactive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-26 20:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duchesse/pseuds/Duchesse
Summary: In addition to being his personal magician, you were often his favorite drinking partner at night. The man had a way of making the most extravagant promises.[Count Lucio/Reader]





	Pamper

Whenever he was in need of a drink, there were two inevitabilities that came from it. The first, no meager commoner wine would suffice, it didn’t have that pungency that stung the insides of his cheeks and laid across his tongue to linger even once he emptied enough bottles. Secondly, he thought drinking alone was a sorry sight and ultimately a sign of weakness.

Not just anyone would do as his company for the night, or any other night for that matter. Although with a history of many nightly excursions to the taverns dotting Vesuvia, begrudgingly accepting menial company just to take the edge off the day, his preferences lied elsewhere and often led him through the dimly illuminated corridors, stirring the flames with a wild flicker.

You had done your best in the past to remember to bolt your doors after the gigantic orb in the sky settled beyond the tallest structures in the city, and as the gloaming married with those thinning hues of red, pink, and orange until nothing but the stars remained like a twinkling veil across your eyes.

There had been far too many instances in the past where assassins had took advantage of your good faith and eased their way inside, other times, thieves under the guise of maids would pilfer your drawers whilst you soaked in a bath. In one instance, pair of workers for the palace had been caught and subsequently vanished of all traces once turned over to Lucio.

Nadia never spoke of those dealings, usually nonchalant of your concerns yet undeniably careful to not say something that would upset you further. You never had the courage to approach Lucio outright with your, for your fear already knew their fate.

Truly, the petty burglars and assassins were a displeasure to be sure and wholly unpleasant to deal with in any capacity, but your honest reasoning for securing your chambers so early after dusk was to assure the count could not enter. He always brought his gifts to appease and too much to drink because he couldn’t bear his own loneliness.

You couldn’t conjure from memory when he started doing it, especially since he had not claimed you as a lover. As it were, you were simply the count’s personal magician to make anything and everything happen; a lucky token, his final performance during a card game.

With you at his side, he knew he could never lose, and perhaps it had been that mutual realization that started it all; both his obstinance in courting you and your simultaneous efforts to shut him out.

This man had no concept of keeping business arrangements strictly professional. He constantly blurred, mangled, and blatantly disregarded them all favor of keeping a favorite thing close to him. You couldn’t claim to be immune to his insistence, in a warped kind of that you refused to acknowledge outright, you enjoyed it. Being a focal point of the most powerful man in the city was bound to stroke your ego a bit.

So, when he shimmied a master key into the lock, swinging both doors wide with the sole of his boot with a number of fat, sloshing bottles lavishly adorned with shimmering paper, and a pair of equally as ridiculous stemware, you didn’t even blink.

He only secured the doors after he dumped his supplies on your bed next to where you sat. For all of his flippancy and taste in the absolute garish of things, he didn’t take well to being disturbed when he was with you. Once a maid knocked two too many times, made his upper lip curl, and the next she was in rags- or so you’ve heard.

You only traced his movements from the glow of his enchanted arm, as well as the tall tallow candles you had spread throughout your room. They sat in their ornate candelabras; dripping the wax and fat onto the silken cloths with delicate sheen to keep from damaging the floor. Their light was enough to capture his silhouette, some nebulous shape to his face and clothes, becoming more distinct the closer he got to you until the feather bed formed a divot to his shape as he sat.

“The nerve of those peasants today. You heard them screaming like pigs, too, right?” He asked while hooking a clawed finger into a cork and removed it from the mouth of the bottle. “I don’t even know what they were bitching about. Something about a bridge, or whatever?”

He poured the wine into the pair of glasses, sending wafts light grape to swirl in your nostrils, meanwhile perfuming the room with a certain sting of alcohol as it traveled outward like fog in the valley. You could already imagine how it tasted; the bitterness of it making you salivate while it sat on you tongue, leaving your mouth and throat parched afterwards.

It had been automatic for you to reach towards him for one glass, but he immediately snagged it away from your reach, holding it aloft as he scooted to the farthest corner of your expansive bed, nestling his back in the v-junction of your wall.

“You want it? You gotta come here.” He swirled it teasingly, his lips pulled taut as he smiled playfully. “Come on, c'mere. I don’t imagine you want to lose out on this. It smells so damn good.”

“I’m already sitting on the bed, Lucio,” you challenged, slowly turning your body towards him. “Just give me the stupid glass or get out.”

For a moment, he seemed to consider your words as he jutted his lips, eyes pointed towards the high ceiling. “Mmm, how about, no. And you can’t kick me out, it’s _my_ palace. I could kick you out whenever I wanted to.”

“Except you won’t,” you rebuffed, eyebrows arched as high as they could go. “I think you’d literally rather die than let me go.”

That ended the banter in a fell swoop, his face puckered in disapproval but he didn’t give any further refute, other than a sharp exhale. “_Whatever._ Just get over here. I’m getting tired of holding your glass.”

You popped onto your knees and crawled closer to him despite the feather mattress nearly swallowing you in the process.

A startled grunt jumped from your lips when he grabbed you, barely at arms length from you, and yanked you with such force you crashed against his chest, palms flat against his skin while he swung an arm around your waist.

He was keeping you there with him until he was satisfied. It was unfamiliar to be at this proximity to him, nary a slither separating your bodies at that point.

“What the hell, Lucio? What is with you today?” You hefted yourself up by the waist, hands still sitting on him, though now on his thighs, which you admit you envied and made your ears burn. “I am your mage, not your groupie or whatever. If you think you can just weasel yourself into my bed–”

In that instance he pushed the cool glass of the stemware against your lips, quieting your vocal tirade so immediately that the indignance and thoughts were lost. Although the wine was not chilled, the glass was beaded with condensation and fogged as your hot breath fanned against it. Lucio, meanwhile, had lost that childish sourness on his face in favor of something far more smug.

“Can’t you shut up and just enjoy a good thing?” he stared at you with particular intensity, though it lasted only a moment before he took up his own glass and swirled the fair tinted liquid inside, dipping his nose inside for a whiff. “You should be thanking me. I went all across town for this wine. You like it, right? It isn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t cheap.”

The longer you looked at it, the more you realized that was the kind you preferred; albeit slightly off. It was merely the premise that he bothered to hunt it down at all that weighed your face in surprise. “This stuff is hard to get… it took me months to convince the winery to even give me one.”

Lucio had already drained half of his glass, your eyes trained on the way his throat jumped as he emptied it like nothing more than a simple mead. The remnants of dusk had yet to fully be smothered by the vastness of night when his head chin lowered to a normal height and he held the glass in front of your face, naught a drop left inside.

“Gimme another round.” He said, finally freeing your waist only to jostle you sideways towards the collection of bottles forming wet rings on your bedside table. With being a resident of the palace; both simultaneously as a visitor and employee, you could find little to be agitated about in terms of things. The spacious bedroom brimmed with its amenities remained outrageous to you from the imported ivory writing desk, marbled with dark grey and such a striking varnish you saw your reflection, to the smooth silk sheets draped across your bed. A gift Lucio had presented to you one evening, completely shitfaced.

The layers of clothing that fitted to your body were much of the same nature as the bedroom and its novelties; extravagant and expensive, certainly suitable to adorn a servant of the count considering he had refused to take you among the throngs of citizens without them.

Nothing in this palace truly belonged to you or your body, and for that came some comfort and little responsibility. Perhaps it was that knowledge alone that allowed you your aloofness in regards to your position, to this life you had unwittingly become ensnared. You reaped the benefits of luxury in return for work you could in your sleep, and to be a handsome ornament at Lucio’s side.

“Gimme more. Damn, I’m gonna buy out that winery,” Lucio drawled out after sometime, having guzzled down his sixth or seventh glass already, though you had lost track of your own after three. You traced the rim of your glass across your lower lip, tugging at your skin as your eyes looked on; glossed and unfocused. His arm still stayed hooked at your waist, growing bolder still in his languor by nestling his angular face into the crook of your neck. “You liked that place, right? I’ll buy it out for you and everything they own. I can do that, you know?”

As the sharp pop of glass rang in your ears, having missed the table to set yours down, you reached for another one to pour him a drink. “I don’t need a winery, you idiot. Here, sippy.”

He didn’t take it from you, in fact, his desire to drink had long dissipated for him. You were a little more careful this time to actually touch the stemware atop the table before glancing towards him, blinking once, twice, thrice for his face to sharpen. Those clear blue eyes of his pierced through you like a beacon atop of a lighthouse boring through the mist swirling above the sea.

You would never admit to him the way it made your chest flutter and clench, and your gut cramp anxiously when he looked at you. In this moment, you weren’t a part of an audience which he wanted to adore him; rather, you thought he saw you as a being. He only saw you. Wh-what? Do I still have lettuce in my teeth?”

It was a lost attempt at humor this time as he held you closer still, taking a cluster of tassels hanging from the thin fabric at your shoulder and began to wind it round his finger. “I think you’re lying. If you don’t want a winery, tell me what you want. C’mon, tell me!”

You smacked your lips with your own glass, feeling for the rim and took another drink. “Nothin’, you can’t give me anything I’d want.”

His crooked finger tightened around the tassel, pulling the fabric against your shoulder taut. “Liar. I bet you want you want me to buy out all the bakeries in the city, right? I’ll do that, too. I’ll reserve all of the gondola tours for just us. You like that weird shit from the marketplace, don’t you?”

“It isn’t weird shit. They’re useful for spells n’ stuff.” You pushed the words out harshly with a sigh, upsetting the liquid inside as the glass smeared grey from your breath. “Newt is good for that fancy card thing you like me to do. Goroberry is good for a sleep tonic. Bat wing can–”

“Yeah, whatever. I don’t care. Listen, listen; I got it figured out.” His voice rose a pitch above your own, his warm fingers coming to rest across your lips to startle you into silence whilst he drew closer, so much so you thought the heat from his reddened cheeks. “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do. Ready for it? You’ll love it. First thing in the morn- first thing_ tomorrow_, I’m going to close down every tailor in the city.”

Even in his inebriated state, he was able to catch the arch of your brows and glimmer in your eye. “Wanna know why? Because your clothes suck. They went out of style months ago.”

Your eyebrows curved inward, lips thinning against his fingers. “You’re the one who bought me all this junk. It’s your fault it’s out of style-”

Of course, he didn’t hear your criticism and gave a content smile, something you expected a true hardworking individual would fall into slumber with. “I can’t have my magician wearing last month’s fashion. Yeah, that’s it. Not enough gold; I’m gonna make them go _big_, baby.”

While thoroughly nonplussed with his frivolous promises, you would not deny yourself the gush of pride that swelled in your chest against your ribs; it blossomed and radiated out through your veins with gentle warmth, eventually reaching up your neck to your ears like the first glow of morning touching your skin. “Maybe some nice cuffs and shoes are due.”

There his smile morphed somewhere between a sneer and grin, clearly enveloped in his own satisfaction of reeling some agreement from you. The ugly thing remained carved into his mouth even as he plucked the wine glass from your fingers by the wide mouth and polished the rest with a swig.

You nestled there against him with a smile of your own, anchored by his unrelenting grip. It would be easy to rest tonight with him in your bed if only solely for the fact of the excitement you anticipated tomorrow once seeing him grovel to Nadia to lend him those funds.


End file.
